These were the top 4 vote-getters in jenson's niche poll a while back, they're just for fun and don't have any bearing on the tournament.

So how did we come to this field of 65? 48 were from the review system, 15 were selected by Basenotes members, and 2 are competing today!

Key:
Pos = Number of positive reviews.
Neg = Number of negative reviews.
Neut = Number of neutral reviews.
Total = Total number of reviews.

Group 1: Top 16 By Negative-Weighted Pct. ((Pos-Neg)/Total) - These are technically the strongest challengers of the tournament, as they had many positives and very few negatives.
Group 2: Top 16 By Simple Pct. (Pos/Total) - These have a large fan-base, but may also have their share of detractors too.
Group 3: Top 16 By Most Ratings (Pos + Neut + Neg) - Those biggest of names, these enter by right of sheer name-recognition.
Group 4:
5 Forum Selections
2 Selections By Bluesoul
2 Selections By Grant
2 Selections By mikeperez23
2 Selections By Dimitri
2 Selections By JaimeB
1 Play-In Game Winner

The Play-In Game competitors are the Lowest by Simple Pct. vs. Lowest by Negative-Weighted Pct.

If a fragrance appeared on multiple lists the highest rank it achieved was used.

Group 4, the user-contributed section, had all ranks randomized using the random.org random number sequence generator except for the play-in winner which will go in as a 16 seed.

The brackets were then spiraled into each other so that each set of groups was in each bracket section exactly four times, like this:

This helps smooth things out and ensure that the most rated fragrances didn't all have to face each other in the same bracket, as well as the user-submitted selections. The threshold for a fragrance to make a review-based appearance is 30 total reviews (user selections had no minimum). If you think that's too high, sorry; provide me with some more data next year and I'll try it again with a threshold of 15 or 20.

Voting is done with the use of Multi-Group Polls, I've tried this way of doing things before and it's pretty intuitive. You'll see there are multiple poll choices, split into groups of two. You may select only one from each group. And you may as well only pick one because picking both is the same as not voting at all. If you don't feel you know enough about two contenders to pick between them, you don't have to vote in that group. Again, the criteria you're voting on is "Which of these two fragrances would you most like to see advance?" This is deliberately vague so people can make choices based on reasons they're comfortable with. Maybe it's a holy grail of yours, maybe you love the monster sillage of it, maybe you just think the bottle looks cool. Whatever reason you want, it's a game. Whichever fragrance in each group has the most votes wins. In the event of a tie, the game will be replayed in the next thread.

Round 1 will start in early March, the total event will be 63 games over 26 days in 23 threads. Multiple games will be to each thread.

I cannot bring myself to vote for either one. I have never tried Secretions Magnifiques , but don't like it ( or rather the idea of it).

Light Blue to me is a complete downer. I remember pre-Basenotes smelling it for the first time at a department shop in town. I was so excited, after all, all the beautiful girls wore the feminine one ( of course, the truth is, all women wear that frag). Anyways, I was shocked and dismayed. At least they could have thrown in some apples for the top notes ( that always gets my attention).

Ah, such is the way of the traditionally-irrelevant Play-In Game, as the winner has never won it all in NCAA history.

Right now it's going about as I expected.

As a note, I was contacted via PM about the polls being public and they would prefer a private poll. That's fine with me, the public poll for this thread was so I could correct anyone that was voting for two things in the same group. All future threads will be private polls.

Twitter - @DanielTharpDanielTharp.com has additional reviews and commentary.Always be content with what you have, never be content with what you are.

My Gators will end up lucky to do well in the Not Invited Tournament if they can't figure out how to keep their offense from fading down the stretch, defend the perimeter, and make their frickin' free throws. The only team I might get to root for in March will be whoever's playing Duke.

So thank you, bluesoul! You've clearly put a lot of thought and work into this and it looks like a hoot and a half of fun! I'm working on my bracket right now IN PEN!

Wow, there was clearly a lot of work put into this. Thankfully I am aware of the workings of March Madness (Go UCONN!), because I don't know how anyone could comprehend it otherwise. LOL at the play in game, which is the lesser of two evils? My dark horse (based solely on ranking) is Rive Gauche. Great idea bluesoul!

My head is spinning from your incredible in-depth break down and description bluesoul. I can see you take this very seriously and hats off to you for all of the hard work.

Personally, I don't really understand all of the algorithms that you've described, but hey I've got a competitive bone in my body like all guys and why the hell not!

One question: What happens if you, bluesoul, can't post for some reason. Will the BMM09 come to a grinding halt? Do you have a backup if you suddenly get hit by a bus or something? I'm just saying...

Well, nasty bus-death aside, I intentionally had the thing run less than a month in case I wasn't available one day. Now, if someone wants to work in a backup position, just shoot me a PM. There's not much involved at this point, you see the order of the games and I have an Excel spreadsheet with the rest of the order. All you'd have to do is post the thread with poll in the same style as I've been doing them if the poll isn't up by noon or so Eastern.

And I'll be honest, I have a tremendous ability to make hastily put-together, spontaneous plans look like extremely polished turds. It's a gift. I fully expect the wheels to come off this thing at some point during the tournament but here's hoping against that.

Twitter - @DanielTharpDanielTharp.com has additional reviews and commentary.Always be content with what you have, never be content with what you are.